I am in the process of expanding a short story into the proper length for a young adult novel. The story is one I completed back in 2000, but the original seed of the idea was a story sketch I wrote in 96.
Its been interesting to me how fresh the story and the characters still are in my mind. Even though I am creating new characters and adding a subplot, the existing characters still easily move and interact in my head and on paper. I was worried about meshing the old and new together, but the process has been very seamless. One of the things that has worked well for me is that I'm adding onto the beginning and the end. I'm not changing much of the existing short story, simply using it as the core to build around. I know at the end I'll have to go back and add a thread in the middle to tie it all together, however, the process is going so smoothly I'm going to leave that to the end. Books don't have to be written in chronological order and this is one case where the ability to jump around has been a big benefit.
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